Food businesses pay for SMS and email for years — and rarely see how much that channel wastes. At Appetit we moved order confirmation into a Telegram bot and built a list that brings repeat sales on its own.
- subscribers on the list
- 190,000
- orders from broadcasts
- ₽11.1m
- on SMS and calls
- ₽0
Pizzerias, bakeries and delivery services still confirm orders by SMS or email. This write-up shows, with Appetit, where that money goes — and how much you can pull back.
Where food businesses burn budget
One SMS with a signup or order code cost about ₽2.80. The client spent ₽42,000–84,000 a month on messages alone. A year: ₽504,000–1,008,000.
We first added call-password: the buyer types the last four digits of an incoming number. Cost fell to ₽0.25–0.35 — 8–11× cheaper. Then the main path moved to a Telegram bot: the code arrives in chat, SMS and calls are gone.
Call and SMS costs are now zero.
130,000 subscribers on autopilot
Signing in on the site puts the buyer on the ITYMAN list. A clear offer on the site made the list grow by itself. In 9 months we reached 130,000 subscribers. Peak days: 500–1,000 new contacts. The list is now over 190,000.
These people arrived through the customer cabinet. Landing pages and a separate “subscribe for a deal” offer can still add more.
If someone has no Telegram, the number is still confirmed by a call — as the second option. The visitor types a phone and picks: bot or call.
Repeat sales: +₽11m
The list is not a trophy. Promo and discounts went out in Telegram — long copy and images, not 70 SMS characters. From June to October 2022 we traced 12,316 orders worth ₽11,156,358: +₽2,231,276 to revenue every month.
That is only orders with UTM tags and dedicated promo codes. Including the call centre and other campaigns, the real figure can be about twice as high.
A sales generator in the profile
The bot can ask for a birthday, kids, gender — and store answers on the profile. Then: a birthday discount, a kids’ pizza for parents, 8 March. The offer hits the request, not a blast.
After each order we sent an NPS form. Feedback fixes the service — and lifts the next ticket.
What to take from this case
- Cut SMS on login and order confirmation to zero.
- Sell to the same people again without buying traffic twice.
- Grow revenue with broadcasts and segments — not “one more feed promo”.